Cape Town – A third person has been “functionally cured” of HIV, but South Africa’s HIV/Aids expert, Professor Salim Abdool Karim says there is no medical definition yet for the cure.
A report in the Journal Nature Medicine revealed that a German man, 53, who had often been referred to as the “Berlin patient”, had become the latest person to be cured of HIV after getting a stem cell transplant.
It is reported that he appeared to be the third person cured of HIV.
Bone marrow transplants cured two patient previously and researchers used a cutting-edge stem cell transplant technique that they believe will increase the number of individuals who could benefit from a similar treatment.
Prof Karim, who is the director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research Institute of SA, told the SABC that practical definition is used in the matter and the patient discontinued HIV antiretroviral treatment in 2018.
“We use a more practical definition that is something that we refer to as functionally cured. In other words, every attempt we make to try and find the virus in a person, we can’t find it.
“We look for it for at least three years and after three years if we can’t find it, we say the person is cured.
“We don’t know it might still be hiding, somewhere dormant and may pitch up several years later. But functionally cured is a good way to move forward,” says Karim.
He further said that the apparent cure represented a small step in curing the HIV and it wasn’t a major advance in what it presented, because it showed a technology that is experimental and it is something that cannot be rolled or be made available.
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